Coconut Macaroons

Hello all! I am so pleased that yesterday's post got so many views so I will be doing another post on beef cows and where your meat comes from. Some of you may not know, but Matt my husband/sous chef is also a cattle geneticist and on top of being one smart cookie he has provided me with a really cool set of pictures that shows how we have bred Angus cattle over the past 130 years and how we have changed what they look like.  So that's something to look forward to in the near future. As for now I'm going to share with you a fun and easy coconut macaroon recipe that I still managed to mess up by misreading the directions. The good news is even with the mess up, they still tasted pretty good. Thank you my lab mate Ashley Chung for being my guinea pig and telling me if they were OK. Although Matt is brilliant, his taste buds are not terribly acute.

As always, here is the link to the original recipe: http://bakingbites.com/2007/08/bite-sized-coconut-macaroons/

The finished product!

Coconut macaroons

4 c. shredded, sweetened coconut (I used 1 c. unsweetened and 3 c. sweetened, but it might be better if I used 2 c. of each. If you use only sweetened, you may want to reduce the amount of sugar below)

1/2 c. sugar
 

2 large egg whites
 

1/8 tsp salt
 

1 Tbs cornstarch
 

1 Tbs rum or 1 tsp vanilla extract- I accidentally used 1 Tbs Rum extract! An oops, but it was OKish

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper

Place shredded coconut into a food processor bowl and pulse several times until coconut is finely chopped (not into coconut flour, but into small, rice-sized bits).

Mmmm rice sized bits

 In a large bowl, whisk together egg whites, sugar and salt until smooth. Whisk in cornstarch and rum. 

Egg whites, sugar, salt and cornstarch

Whisk whisk whisk!

This is where I went wrong! I should have used real rum instead of rum extract. They were very rummy balls!

Stir in coconut, making sure the entire mixture is an even consistency.

Dumped all the coconut on top and then tried to whisk with my baby whisk, but it didn't work, go for a fork instead!

Tada! Mixed together and ready to be rolled!

Roll into ~1" diameter balls and drop onto a parchment lined baking sheet.

 Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden on the bottom and top.

First batch baked 20 minutes. Darker brown and lots of burned bottoms. I hate when my bottoms burn!

2nd batch baked 15 minutes and are much less brown and not as many burned bottoms

Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

So things to learn from this blog post: 1.) Rum extract should not be used in Tbs quantities and you should always just go for the good stuff (i.e. the liquor).  2.) Burned bottoms are no fun! 

You could do some seriously good variations on this. You could dip them in chocolate and put an almond on top for baby almond joys, or just put an almond on top and drizzle chocolate over them. I think you could use pineapple juice instead of rum or vanilla extract (or in addition to rum) to make pina colada macaroons. I've heard of using almond extract in them (tsp NOT Tbs!), and I found some lime and mango extract somewhere (Homegoods I think...) which either of those might be good as well. Pretty much so anything that goes with coconut would work! 

Happy eating!